Trillion and Icarus sat cross-legged with their eyes closed in a completely white room. Their arms hanging by their side, his shoulders dropped back. They were completely relaxed, deep and meditation.

“Now breathe out,” Trillion said in a very calming voice as she guided them both through the meditation. “And keep breathing out, And as you do drop your shoulders further down. I want you completely relaxed.”

Neither Trillion nor Icarus needed to breathe. So breathing out was emotion they could do indefinitely, and breathing out was the most relaxing part of meditation.

Trillion slowed her breath even more. “Now breathe in, And feel your body begin to move apart.” This time she started to float off the ground, her chest and lungs expanding.

Icarus joined her in floating. His cartoon like body expanding a lot more than hers.”

Trillion breathed out, her voice coming not from her mouth but from all around the room. “Now as we breathe out, I don't want you to imagine becoming a puddle. I want you to become a puddle, get so relaxed you literally become water on the ground.”

The two of them began to drift towards the floor, Trillion was the first to make contact. And, as she did her body continued melting downwards. She started to become translucent, her body was truly becoming water as she continued to breathe out. Melting, becoming more and more relaxed. She felt like every single problem she'd ever had was disappearing, nothing else was in her mind except this sensation of pure joy and a oneness with herself as a body of water.

Icarus avatar melted too, but it had more of a video game quality. Glissoning as if light was shining over it.

The two of them lay there and meditation for a few moments before Trillian’s calming slow voice was heard all around then once more. “Now, this time as we breathing in I want you to expand your mind. Don't imagine being like mist. Become mist, expand to fill half of this room. And don't focus on any one thing. Become many individual particles of water.”

Trillion began to breathe out. Her puddle began to expand, lifting off the floor of the white room at first, then turning into steam. Before expanding completely, two full one entire half of the room.

It was a thin sheet of glass dividing the room which was not visible until the moment that Trillion expanded to fill the room completely.

Icarus expanded, but unlike trillion couldn't turn into a mist. The puddle of water began to break apart. Once in half, then those two halves broke apart. Then a single droplet pulled away from one of the smaller puddles.

“That’s it keep expanding with your breath.” Trillion said.

More and more tiny droplets began pulling themselves away from the body of water. As Icarus expanded he became like rain floating in space.

The two of them floated like that for 30 minutes. The mist of trillion. And, the rain which was Icarus. They both bobbed up and down with each breath slowly. Before trillion guided them back to their bodies.

“Now with this next breath inwards, I want all of your small droplets to drift inwards. To condense, melt into each other once more.” She began breathing out and shrinking. The mist of Trillion retaking a shape that resembled her outline, before her face and neck became visible. Then her shoulders. Then moments later trillion was sitting, legs and arms crossed, eyes closed. She was in a pure form of zen.

She opened her eyes just in time to watch Icarus fully formed. She smiled a warming smile at him.

Icarus was grinning from ear to ear “That was incredible. I've never been so relaxed and calm in my life.”

“I've been doing this once a day now. It's meditation on steroids.”

“How do you become like mist though?” Icarus asked. “I struggled to concentrate on all the little pieces of me. I couldn't make myself small enough, how did you do it?”

“You just need practise. But I think you're ready, to bring this child into the world.”

Icarus nodded, and the two of them stayed sitting there while the white room around them disappeared revealing the interior of a rotating habitat. From their viewpoint you could be fooled into thinking you were on a planet. Trees, grass, and small cottages surrounded Icarus and Trillion. There wasn’t a window out into space or wall that immediately halted the view. They used the hapticgraphic projectors to project a view onto the walls. Icarus took the creative liberty to add the occasional brachiosaurus dinosaur with it’s long neck walking in the background. The only thing that removed the illusion created by the hapticgraphic projections was when they walked around—the perspective didn’t change.

The rotating habitat orbiting around the gas giant that Icarus found was called Titan. And Icarus wanted to call the world he was building the Rings of Titan. He had begun building small habitats to support his colony. They were dotted around the larger asteroids and small moons that were orbiting Titan. He would eventually connect all of them up together. In theory, once complete an artificial world would rotate around the gas giant. And if someone wanted to they could spend many years of walking in a full loop from one end of the habitat all the way around back to the start.

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But that was still a work in progress, for now they had simply constructed small habitats that were practically the size of a basketball stadium. It was shaped like a dome and at the very top of the dome was a long tether. At the other end of that tether was a heavy counter weight. Icarus would spin these two objects up and that would result in simulated gravity on the small habitat.

Icarus and Trillion were standing outside the hospital now.

Icarus grabbed the door handle. “I'm nervous”.

Trillium placed a hand on his shoulder. “Will be with you this whole time.”

The two of them walked through the door, Atlas was standing next to a robotic nurse who was holding a small plastic cup of water and some pills.

“What is it going to feel like?” Icarus said a little afraid.

“You're going to feel like yourself again,” Atlas said. “You don't realise how different your personality currently is until you go through this process. Luckily, I've gone through it already, so we know what to expect.”

“That's why we did the meditation.” Trillion said. “Just practise your breathing.”

Icarus breathed a long breath out. “Okay let's do it.”

Icarus walked towards the electronic incubator machine just behind the nurse. It was a white machine with a clear section filled with fluid. Trillion handed him a small metal tube. Icarus slotted the tube into a whole on the incubator machine. Noises started to happen.

The nurse walked over to Icarus and handed him the cup of water in some pills. “What are they?”

“It's to help with the placebo effect,” Atlas said. “The physical pill and the code we've added to your matrix will help calm you and prepare your mind for what is about to happen.”

Icarus grab the pills and swallowed them. Then he drunk the water and handed the cup back to the nurse. “Now we wait. Nine months in 2 minutes.”

Trillion knew Atlas wasn’t going to change his playback speed, he had a colony now, and every time they moved forward in time, he would pop off to his planet to see his kids. But in this instance, they wanted Icarus to feel like they were both there to support him. So Trillion and Atlas nodded. Atlas left an avatar to look like it was moving forward in time. While Trillion and Icarus changed their playback speed. Time began to speed up, it was like a movie behind the glass of the incubator machine. They were literally watching life, human life, grow in front of their eyes. At first it looked like a tadpole floating in a bowl of clear white Jelly. Then the tale of the tadpole began to curl and legs appeared. Then arms appeared. Then after a little while, what mostly looked like a forehead attached to some appendages started to have defining features—a real human face.

Then the little baby started turning around. Moving. Spinning. Swimming through the embryonic fluid. But because time was sped up it looked jittery and the baby's motion looked like a blur.

She could clearly see it was a girl as her perception of time started to return to normal. A white cover moved over the clear part of the mechanical incubator. And her view of the baby disappeared. Moments later the nurse walked behind the machine and came back carrying a little girl. All wrapped up in the cutest little blanket.

Trillions heart broke then, and she was filled with so much joy. Babies are beyond cute, she thought. Warm feelings of butterflies, she had to fight the urge not to hold the baby first. She was so jealous of Icarus in that very moment. He had just colonised the world and brought the most special little girl into this universe.

Icarus took hold of the baby, and started to weep. He started to cry even more, he handed the baby to Trillion. Who took hold of her and rocked her gently. The nurse brought over a bottle and Trillion began feeding her.

“Ahhhhh —” Icarus screamed. “Why have I been here for so long. Why did I agree to do this? Such a stupid idea leaving Mars. My friends. My family.”

Trillion could tell Icarus was going through the same thing that Atlas went through. That little section in his matrix was being deleted. All the emotions and feelings it was holding back we're now able to flow freely through him. “Breathe.” Trillion said rocking the baby up and down. “Drop your shoulders. You can get through this.”

Icarus started to hyperventilate. “Ship, can you help!?”

The Ship of Icarus joined in the room. The droid put an arm on Icarus. He blinked a few time, obviously scanning Icarus. “Lex I'm sending you an additional piece of code, can you add this to Icarus.”

Lex appeared in the room. Lex was a floating orb, actually he was a 3 dimensional shadow of a four dimensional sphere—called a hypersphere. Which basically meant its shape and size changed constantly, but it mostly looked like a sphere that pulsated.

The orb flashed green, indicating it had implemented the piece of code.

“Thank you,” said Ship. “Icarus should start to feel a little calmer now.”

Icarus’s breathing started to calm. He started to look at the little baby, he posted a fake smile on his face. “I feel so numb now.” He moaned. “Definitely feels like I'm drugged up on antidepressants.”

“You're doing better than I was,” Atlas said. “At this point I was a mess on the floor curled up in a ball.”

“Back then we didn't know this was going to happen,” Trillion said.

“I can feel my mind wanting to go in circles.” Icarus said almost sleepily. “I'm replaying that moment we left, when Peter was shot. We were chased off Mars. I'm wondering whether I even had to go. I don't think we had a moment to think.”

“It took me a couple of weeks to get back to normal.” Atlas said.

Icarus scratched his head. “Can I skip ahead to that part?”

“It's two weeks of real experienced time. You can't change your playback speed, because your mind has to have time to process it. Process everything that just happened. And everything that's happened ever since we left Mars. Trust me in two weeks you'll start to feel better.”

Icarus started to cry a little. “Thank you for being with me this whole time. Trillion, Atlas, Ship I love you all. You three are honestly my best friends. I don't know how I’ll feel when a few weeks, but at this stage I want to go back home—back to Sol.”

Trillion walked over and gave him a hug. Holding the baby in one hand and wrapping her other arm around Icarus. She didn't think it was appropriate, to point out to him that Sol just tried to arrest her. If he went back to Earth or Mars, then he'd probably be going to prison. Or worse, they’d just switch him off. “What are you gonna name her?” She said holding the baby towards him.

“Eve.” Icarus said as he took a hold of her.